Temperature station data

Station Header File

World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Station Number with a single additional character making a field of 6 integers.
WMO numbers comprise a 5 digit sub-field, where the first two digits are the country code and the next three digits designated by the National Meteorological Service (NMS).
Some country codes are not used. If the additional sixth digit is a zero, then the WMO number is or was an official WMO number.
Two examples are given at the end. Many additional stations are grouped beginning 99****.
Station numbers in the blocks 72**** to 75**** are additional stations in the United States.

Station latitude in degrees and tenths (-999 is missing), with negative values in the Southern Hemisphere

Station longitude in degrees and tenths (-1999 is missing), with negative values in the Eastern Hemisphere

Station Elevation in metres (-999 is missing)

Station Name

Country

First year of monthly temperature data

Last year of monthly temperature data

Data Source (see below)

First reliable year (generally the same as the first year)

Station data file

Header file - as above

Year followed by 12 monthly temperatures in degrees and tenths (with -999 being missing)

Station sources

This is a two digit source code, which was introduced in Jones and Moberg (2003) and Brohan et al. (2006). References to sources are in these publications. Few stations have a single source of data due to real-time updating (from WMO's CLIMAT messages or decadal World Weather Record publications or from the publication Monthly Climatic Data for the World). The code given here is therefore where most of the data series has been obtained.

10 - from earlier CRU work (from World Weather Record volumes, published by the Smithsonian Institution and NOAA/WMO from the 1920s onwards)

30 - GHCN and for Australia (from Bureau of Meteorology)

31 - GHCN

32 - ALOCLIM (Austria)

33 - NACD/NORDKLIM (Scandinavia and NW Europe)

34 - NACD/NORDKLIM (Scandinavia)

35 - IMPROVE project

36 - CHTD (Canada)

37 - GHCN (principally fUSSR but also some other regions)

The different GHCN sources relate to the priority given in merging (see Table 1 of Jones and Moberg, 2003)

Examples of WMO station numbers

010010 - Jan Mayen, Norway.
01 is the code for Norway, and 001 the number designated by the Norwegian NMS.
The sixth character here is a zero.

024581 - Stockholm, Sweden.
02 is the code for Sweden and Finland, with 458 the code once used for a station in the Stockholm area.
The sixth character is a not zero and this means the series is likely from a site that is different from an official WMO location.